Dear All,
One of my responses to the early days of the pandemic was to apply for a mid-career LL.M. degree for international students, to Harvard Law School (I've just heard that I have NOT made it).
I'd like to share with everyone, my original writing, which was a part of the application process, and submitted by 1st December, 2020 (a final PDF version was submitted, but this is the essence)
Here it is:
The creative use of India’s Forest Rights
Act[1],
read with International Conventions, for International Co-operation:
Struggles and learnings that preceded the
passing of the Act:
One played a key role[2] in the formulation of the
historic parliamentary legislation on Forest Rights brought about by the United
Progressive Alliance government.[3]
The decade leading up to the enactment of this central
legislation was one of relevant consultations in the context of preparing
India’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan[4], via mass political contact, legal
briefing and strategizing to support struggles for land rights[5] against the unjust
displacement of communities.
At the heart of many of these struggles lay the
obstacles of unresolved issues pertaining to pre-existing ‘forest rights’[6] of communities in a post-colonial
world.
The way forward for the Act in India:
The treatment of the Forest Rights Act in various
states of India continues to be a matter of debate and concern.
The following attitudinal approach, and
course-corrections by some state governments and commentators is recommended:
1) A
need to realize that the existence of the Act, and the rights it recognizes are
effective as they are, in the law book, and that there is no time limit or
deadline imposed on the claimants of such rights to have their rights
specifically recorded.
Pro-active “implementation” on the
government’s part could serve to exclude those who still need to know their rights,
such as individual women who could describe their chosen abode within an
expansive habitat as a woman-headed household.
Community Rights should not be usurped
by the community to the detriment of the rights of individual women and girls
to own a dwelling.
2) Legally
empower women and girls to make claims. Invest in empowering women from the
legal community to participate in such an exercise.
3) Streamline
the structure and functioning of Trifed[7] to honour the Forest
Rights Act.
Once in synchrony with the Act, the
International Trade potential of Trifed could address contentious issues such
as intellectual property rights pertaining to medicinal plants, and the
regulation of intoxicants and the like.
The International Relevance of India’s
Forest Rights Act:
The Act has the capacity to be an instrument for
co-operation, or to at least emulation leading to synergetic application in
India’s neighbourhood and beyond.
The Community Rights aspect of the Act is a key factor
for the amalgamation of the imperatives of conservation into participatory
diplomatic engagement.
I recommend crafting an interface between such
legislation, and international conventions and treaties that deal with
environmental and trans-boundary issues.
My sense is that one of the stumbling blocks to
leveraging environmental agendas for the furtherance of diplomatic goals with
contentious neighbours has been that this part of the conversation has been
possibly dominated by purely wildlife-oriented[8] officials who manage to
influence those who conceptualize scenarios for border affairs.
I would choose to use the Act as a vanguard for
optimising the chances of peace, not only with India’s neighbours, but
non-contiguously across the globe, based on re-verifying and consolidating
inputs related to the legal status of post-colonial lands, and other areas of
similar strife.
Use the Community Conservation aspect of
the Biological Diversity Act of India to augment this effort:
In the context of testing the varied levels of
applicability along India’s land and sea borders to expand the influence of the
spirit of the Constitution of India, to begin with, one would advise planners
to be careful not to allow the balance to be tilted towards oil-exploring or
other environmentally destructive lobbies.
It would be well worth scrutinizing the conceptual
trade-offs in investment that vested mega industrial interests might need to
reimagine in order to help India’s neighbours benefit from an agenda of co-operation
leading to prosperity.
Community-based conservation efforts, including for marine
sanctuaries, hold great potential. India had met the required timelines of the
International Convention on Biological Diversity to pass the domestic
Biological Diversity Act, which includes community conserved areas in its
purview.
Incentives created by the agenda to combat climate
change could be woven into this process.
The origins of the idea:
Looking back at the politico-legal work that I’ve been
a part of, and sometimes initiated over the past quarter of a century, I find
that most situations of strife and conflict can be addressed and solved through
diligent, persistent, and committed dialogue and non-violent and democratically
merited means.
My points of interest with reference to problem-solving
at the outset of my career in the 1990s were:
a) the aspiration to analyse, in a legally informed
manner, the causes for environmental degradation and destruction, and to address
these factors, especially in areas of India that I was familiar with: the Eastern
Ghaat hill range along the east coast of India, and the country’s capital city,
New Delhi;
b) the need to comprehend ground realities, and
unravel legal complexities in order to ascertain and dissect the causes for
unrest and associated violence in my traditional ‘home states’ of Andhra
Pradesh and Orissa, unequivocally described in the previous century as centres
of extreme left-wing ideology.
Given my unique cultural background[9], and the advantages of a
New Delhi education made possible because of the electorate having voted my
father to parliament (located in new Delhi) several times, I considered it my
duty towards “our people” of our erstwhile royal zamindari estate of Kurupam, and
of the modern-day parliamentary constituency reserved for the Scheduled Tribe[10] community, to contribute
my legal skills full-time, to help improve their lives and access and own their
habitats.
Areas of academic learning that helped
formulate actions:
Drawing from learnings in Constitutional Law, Law and
Poverty, Environmental Law, Criminology, and aspects of Customary Law in the
course of my LL.B. studies, and greatly empowered by a Diploma in Environmental
Law, where my term paper[11] called for the strengthening
of grassroots democracy, or the Panchayat Raj System, the journey forward has
been demonstrably a thematically consistent and fruitful one.
The deeply impactful discussions on international
environmental law and international development during the months spent in the
USA in 1998 as an India Visiting Environmental Law Fellow helped me evolve a
global perspective and vision.
Harvard:
The time is now right for one to integrate one’s
politico-legal efforts into academic pursuits at Harvard.
The forthcoming academic year is an appropriate
time-window for me to dedicate to the upgradation of legal academic skills. I
would choose this over mass political contact, given the Covid situation.
Harvard would enrich the academic writing that I hope
to focus on in the future.
It would be a valuable networking experience, would
serve to diversify and expand the agenda of my legal work, and open new avenues
for public speaking and occasional teaching assignments.
The opportunity to learn from, and debate with some of
the best legal minds, in the world would be priceless.
(1498 words)
[1]
The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of
Forest Rights) Act, 2006
[2]
Socio-legal advice provided as an INC party worker and legal expert to the
chairman and members of the Joint
Parliamentary Committee in a sustained manner; networking with various
organizations, including the Campaign for Survival and Dignity; discussions
with the ‘tiger lobby’ to assuage their concerns; my pro bono oral legal
opinion was sought by the Prime Minister’s Office, in connection with the
associated setting up of the Tiger Conservation Authority while incorporating
the imperatives of the Forest Rights Act.
[3]
The multi-party coalition government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh, and led by
my party, the Indian National Congress, led by its president, and chairperson
of the National Advisory Council, Ms. Sonia Gandhi.
[4] I
was a member of the national-level Technical and Policy Core Group that held
widespread consultations and advised the Government of India and UNDP’s
processes to create India’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan.
[5]
For example, the rights of tribal communities, and other farmers whose sources
of water for irrigation would have been adversely impacted if the mining of
bauxite had been permitted in Niyomgiri in Orissa.
[6] A
variety of Individual as well as Community rights, ranging from dwelling, to
access to non-timber forest produce, to easement rights and more.
[7] Trifed is a
co-operative that deals in tribal-made with handicraft, and forest and other
produce that fall within the purview of the Forest Rights Act. This is an
organization that is under the wing of India’s Ministry of Tribal Affairs.
[8]
Ie., those who would promote pure wilderness and exclude local communities of
any side from being stakeholders.
[9]
Princess of the erstwhile zamindari estate of Kurupam where the zamindar was
accorded the hereditary title of Rajah by the British, as well as being
categorized as belonging to the Scheduled Tribe community as hill chiefs of the
Konda Dora tribe in independent India.
[10] The 10th
Schedule to the Constitution of India, for affirmative action in favour of
certain tribal communities.
[11] Basic
Legal Requirements for the Local Management of Forest Resources in the Light of
Joint Forest Management Notifications, 1995, Term Paper, Centre for
Environmental Law, World Wide Fund for Nature, India.
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